


Unbroken, Embattled

by Pastafarian



Category: Tales of Inthya - Effie Calvin
Genre: Fight Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:09:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25677865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pastafarian/pseuds/Pastafarian
Summary: A completely out-of-style alternative fight scene between Gaelle and Esofi.
Kudos: 4





	Unbroken, Embattled

It was the calmness that had surprised her the most, when the inevitable happened. When her mother had been foiled on every move and had resorted to naked violence and greed, when the desires and will of everyone else had arrayed against the Queen and the Queen had measured those desires and found them wanting.

_ “You will know,” Adale had said to her, “when the time will come to fight. It will not come in anger, nor will it come in sorrow. It will come with a singing calm.” _

The words had been spoken and derided. She had followed the proper forms, of course; she had called on her mother to desist, had reminded her that some lines were not to be crossed, had called upon the moon in shadow and the moon in glory alike to witness the proceedings, in the end. Her mother had mocked her and laughed, and Esofi had struck without further warning.

_ “You are strong. More powerful than anyone in these realms, more powerful than any other mortal I’ve seen. But you’ve never fought anyone as powerful as you are.” _

She had struck with no tell, no sign. She knew this; she’d practiced, trained it, a lash of magic faster than the eye could track, and still Gaelle’s shield was up before the strike landed, dissipating harmlessly against a crimson bubble. No subtlety, no attempt to out-think her, just an overwhelming defense against which her attack was a pebble striking a fortress.

_ “You think my mother is stronger.” _

_ “I don’t think it. I know it.” _

An ultimatum offered, an ultimatum returned. Esofi crushed the panic in her heart into iron determination and gathered her magic to strike again, hastily turning it into a shield as magic swelled in Gaelle’s hands before lashing out in an almost sarcastic mimicry of her first opening strike. Anger rose in her throat, almost choking her; even now, her mother toyed with her.

_ “Not just stronger. More experienced, more vicious. But not, I think, more disciplined.” _

She channeled that anger into her shield as she watched the power grow between Gaelle’s fingers. Two pulsing, screaming pillars of bloody fire grew as she tried to bait her daughter, tried to provoke her, tried to break her with words. The narrowing of her eyes was the only sign she gave of her surprise when Esofi settled down into the balance of her stance instead, shield firming up around her. They widened, moments later, more than fractionally, when the lightning strike of her attack shattered, and with a gesture Esofi extinguished the embers that remained before they threatened the planks of the ship they’d scattered across.

_ “You will have to weather the storm. It will be like nothing you have seen. Even as hard as we’ve been training won’t be the same, though your shields have improved a great deal.” _

What followed the lightning was the storm.

A thousand strikes flowed one into the other. A storm of ice masking a lance of fire became a wash of acid, a hundred expressions of power in the hands of someone who knew the language of magical violence with a shocking intimacy. Esofi felt the calm take her, felt the power flow over and through; the storm wrapped around her, and she was unbroken.

Finally, she struck, and nearly died for it.

_ “You will have to keep your root. If you keep your root, and mind your footwork? You can beat anyone’s fancy moves with just the basics.” _

She had divined a pattern in her mother’s attacks. Ice always flowed into fire; and so she turned the fire back onto her, absorbing and molding it with her magic rather than deflecting it. The response was immediate: a catching of her strike so elegant and impossible it could not have been anything but premeditated, Esofi’s magic ripped viciously out of her shield as her knees buckled and her attack came roaring back towards her as a wall of flame, augmented and shaped by Gaelle’s will.

She dove, rolling as the flame scorched her, screaming in pain and somehow fighting through it to put a shield back up as Gaelle advanced. Howling in rage and triumph, face contorted, her mother struck again.

_ “You have one trick up your sleeves, that’s good. But your mother has seen tricks before. If her root is unbroken, if she is in her center of power and balance, she will adapt to yours, and she will break you.” _

Her mother’s hand struck her shield physically, this time delivering a magic-imbued impact that shattered her defenses. Her reflexes took her rolling to one side as the other hand came down wreathed in flame to scythe through where her head had just been, and she rocked forwards onto one knee, onto her two feet.

Keeping the momentum going, her hands already forming a new shield, she spun gracefully and hammered her heel into the side of her mother’s knee.

The unfamiliar pain of the impact radiated up her heel and leg. She was in another balanced stance now, knees slightly bent, feet perpendicular to the line that connected the two of them. Her forward hand grabbed at the air, twisting an attack out of line. In the same moment, she struck in the most predictable way, pure force with the rear hand under her guard hand.

In the same moment, ignoring the pain, ignoring the splinters digging into her sole, she stepped in with her rear foot. Her front foot came up, and she kicked her mother under the ribs with all the magic she hadn’t committed to her hand’s feint, with fire and ice and lightning..

_ “Break. Her. Root.” _

Again. She stepped forwards as her mother struck and struck and struck, and she shielded, twisted, absorbed, reformed, and redirected five attacks in two heartbeats, keeping enough awareness to blanket the fire bursting forth from the shattered lantern with ice. She stepped forwards again and swept low, then struck in line, disconnected bursts of magic that left her mother nothing to grab and use against her, and punched her shield as Adale had taught her.

The calmness took her as she advanced, and it stayed through a dozen exchanges of violence, stayed even as the pain billowed beneath it, even when the kick that broke through the shield to shatter Gaelle’s kneecap broke her foot along with it.

.

In the daylight, the ship looked fine. Underneath that illusion of normalcy, Esofi knew, was a storm of labor taking place. The keel was undamaged, but the entire aft deck was a ruin, as was the floor below.

The timbers would be repaired, and replaced where they could not.

She would heal. Her mother would heal. Perhaps even what lay between them would heal, in part. And eventually, where necessary, what would not heal would be replaced.


End file.
